Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford
Nancy Mitford
Born	(1904-11-28)28 November 1904 London, England
Died	30 June 1973(1973-06-30) (aged 68) Versailles, France
Occupation	Novelist, biographer
Notable works	The Pursuit of Love Love in a Cold Climate

Nancy Freeman-Mitford, CBE (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973), styled The Hon. Nancy Mitford before her marriage and The Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd thereafter, was an English novelist and biographer, one of the Bright Young People on the London social scene in the inter-war years. She is best remembered for her series of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945; but she also wrote four popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great).

Life

Family background and connections

File:Mitfords-tree-vertical.jpg

A partial family tree, indicating some of the Mitford family's links to other distinguished families

The Mitford family dates from the Norman era, when Sir John de Mitford held the Castle of Mitford in Northumberland. The family's coat of arms, a shield decorated with three moles, was derived from the nearby village of Molesden. A later Sir John Mitford held a number of important public offices during the late 14th and early 15th centuries, including Keeper of the Seal to Edward, Duke of York, and was for many years member of parliament for Northumberland. The tradition of public service endured in the Mitford family and its cadet branches for many generations, usually unobtrusively. Occasionally a member achieved a wider celebrity. In the 18th century William Mitford, from the Exbury branch of the family, was recognised as a leading classical historian, while his younger brother John Freeman-Mitford served both as Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He was raised to the peerage in 1802, as the 1st Baron Redesdale. After the death of his son, the 2nd Baron Redesdale, in 1886, the title temporarily lapsed. Another branch of the family produced the writer and dramatist Mary Russell Mitford, who made her name and fortune with a series of chronicles of village life, Our Village, published between 1824 and 1832.

William Mitford's great-grandson Algernon Bertram Mitford, born in 1837 and known as "Bertie", was a diplomat and traveller who in 1874 was appointed by Benjamin Disraeli as Secretary to the Board of Works. In that same year he married Clementina, the second daughter of David Ogilvy, the 10th Earl of Airlie, a union which was to link the Mitfords with some of Britain's most powerful aristocratic families. Clementina's aunt Katharine, the 10th Earl's sister-in-law, married into the Duke of Bedford's family, and was the mother of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Clementina's brother David, who became the 11th Earl of Airlie in 1881, was the grandfather of Angus Ogilvy, who in 1963 married Princess Alexandra of Kent, a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II. Blanche Ogilvy, Clementina's elder sister, became the wife of Sir Henry Montague Hozier, a soldier turned businessman. This marriage was unsuccessful because of the infidelities of both parties; nevertheless three daughters and a son were born during the union, including Clementine in 1885 and twins William and Nellie in 1888. In 1908 Clementine married the future British prime minister Winston Churchill, a grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. It is generally accepted by historians and family members that Hozier was not the biological father of any of Blanche's children, although they were registered as such. Blanche herself told her friend Lady Londonderry, shortly before Clementine's birth,that the father of the expected child was her own brother-in-law, Bertie Mitford, a claim which her youngest daughter Mary Soames discusses at length in her biography of her mother without dismissing it altogether. Most historians believe that other candidates for the paternity are more likely.

Bertie's marriage to Clementina produced five sons and two daughters. His career in government service ended in 1886, when after the death of his distant cousin John, the 2nd Baron Redesdale, he inherited a considerable fortune, although not the title. A condition of the inheritance was that he adopt the surname "Freeman-Mitford". He rebuilt Batsford House, the family's country seat, served briefly as a Unionist MP in the 1890s, and otherwise devoted himself to books, writings and travel. In 1902 he was raised to the peerage when the Redesdale barony was revived, becoming the 1st Baron Redesdale of the new creation.

Childhood

Parentage

Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (1902 creation)

David Bertram Ogilvy Mitford ("Freeman-Mitford" after 1886) was born on 13 March 1878. He was a difficult child, given to bursts of violent rage and frustration, and grew up in the shadow of his much-favoured elder brother. Educated at Radley College, David had intended a career in the army, but his lack of interest in all forms of book-learning led him to fail the entrance examinations for the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Instead he went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a tea planter. He returned to England in 1899 on the outbreak of the Boer War, in which he fought as an officer in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and was severely wounded. In 1903 he became engaged to Sydney Bowles, the elder daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles and Jessica, née Evans-Gordon. Thomas Bowles, known as "Tap", was a journalist, editor and magazine proprietor whose publications included Vanity Fair and The Lady. He later pursued a political career, and in 1892 entered parliament as the Conservative member for King's Lynn. After Jessica Bowles died when Sydney was seven, she and her brothers and sister were brought up largely by their father, who educated his daughters at home and by taking them on a year-long voyage to the Middle East in his private yacht.

Bowles was a close friend of Bertie Mitford; the families socialised together, and Sydney first met David in 1894, when she was 14. Their initial mutual attraction was short-lived; Sydney, who grew to be a recognised beauty, enjoyed passionate though apparently chaste relationships with numerous suitors before she accepted David's proposal. They were married on 16 February 1904, after which they rented a house in Graham Street (later Graham Terrace), just off Eaton Square in West London. To help the young couple's finances, Bowles provided his son-in-law with a job, as business manager of The Lady magazine. David disliked the sedentary life, had little interest in reading and knew nothing of business; thus, according to Nancy Mitford's biographer Selena Hastings, "a less congenial post ... could hardly have been imagined". Nevertheless he remained in this post for ten years. The couple's first child, a daughter, was born on 28 November 1904; they had intended to call her Ruby, but after she was born changed their minds and named her Nancy.

First years

"I think that nothing in my life has changed more than the relationship between mothers and young children. In those days a distance was always kept. Even so, she was perhaps abnormally detached."

Nancy Mitford on her mother's approach to child-rearing.

No. 1 Graham Street, although small by the standards of the London gentry's houses, was plentifully supplied with servants: a cook, a parlourmaid, a housemaid, a kitchenmaid, a nanny and a nursemaid. The last two were of particular significance to the infant Nancy, since in accordance with the upper-class custom of the day, Sydney delegated responsibility for all her day-to-day upbringing to this pair—within certain strict guidelines. These included an aversion to medicine and doctors (the "good body" was supposed to take care of itself"), and a belief, fostered by one of David's sisters, that children should never be corrected or be spoken to in anger. Before this experiment was discontinued, Nancy had become self-centred and uncontrollable, quite unprepared to share her status when, just before her third birthday, a sister, Pamela, was born. Her nanny's apparent switch of loyalty in favour of the new arrival was a particular source of outrage to Nancy; throughout their childhood and into young adulthood, she continued to vent her displeasure on her sister at this displacement.

In January 1909 a brother, Tom was born, and in June 1910 another sister, Diana, followed. That summer, to relieve the pressure on what was becoming an overcrowded nursery, Nancy was sent to the nearby Francis Holland School. The few months she spent there represented the whole of her formal schooling, since in the autumn the family moved to a larger house in Victoria Road, Kensington; thereafter Nancy was educated at home by successive governesses. From 1911 the children spent their summers at High Mill Cottage near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, or staying with relations including their Redesdale grandparents at Batsford House. In the winter of 1913–14 David and Sydney visited Canada, prospecting for gold on a claim that David had purchased in Swastika, Ontario. It was here that their fifth child was conceived, a daughter born in Victoria Road on 8 August 1914 and christened Unity.

War, Batsford Park and Asthall Manor

On the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, David rejoined his regiment and was soon in France. Nancy maintained a correspondence with her absent father, sometimes writing in French, a language she was learning in the schoolroom. In May 1915 the family received news that Clement, David's older brother, had been killed, while serving with the 10th Royal Hussars. Since Clement had no sons, his death meant that David was now the heir to the Redesdale title and lands. On 17th August 1916 Bertie Mitford died and David, still serving in France, became the 2nd Baron Redesdale. Sydney quickly took possession of Batsford House, much of which had been shut up for many years, and occupied the portion of it that she could afford to heat. The house and grounds provided an excellent playground for the children; Nancy kept goats and a terrier, while the others bred toads, frogs, snakes and mice in various outhouses. From January 1917 the children (apart from the infant Unity) were taught together in the schoolroom, a frustration for Nancy as the teaching had to take account of the needs of Diana, six years her junior. Fortunately there was in Batsford House a well-stocked library in which Nancy, a voracious reader, spent many hours; according to Hastings: "In the library at Batsford were laid the foundations of her intellectual life".

Asthall Manor, the Mitford family home between 1919 and 1926

Although the Redesdale estates were extensive, in cash and income terms they were uneconomical. At the end of the war the new Lord Redesdale decided to sell Batsford Park and move his still-growing family (a fifth daughter, Jessica, had been born in September 1917) to less extravagant accommodation. The house was sold early in 1919, soon after the end of the war, together with many of its contents—including, to Nancy's great dismay, much of the library stock. The new family home was Asthall Manor, a Jacobean mansion near the village of Swinbrook in Oxfordshire. This was intended as a temporary measure while a new house was built on some Redesdale land in Swinbrook; in the event, the family stayed in Asthall House for seven years, and it became the basis of many of the family scenes which Nancy was later to portray in her semi-autobiographical novels.

During these years at Asthall Manor, Nancy progressed from childhood, through adolescence and into young womanhood. The early stages of this development were difficult for her. Unable to form a relationship with Pamela, the sister nearest to her in age, she was bored and irritated by her younger siblings, and vented her feelings by teasing and tormenting them. Although there was undoubtedly cruelty in her tauntings—the other children, led by Tom, formed a "Leag (sic) against Nancy"—it was also, according to the later reflections of her nephew Alexander Mosley: "a highly-honed weapon to keep a lot of highly competitive, bright, energetic sisters in order. She used it ... as a form of self protection". Not all her interactions with her siblings were hostile; when the children were confined indoors she edited and produced a magazine, The Boiler, to which she contributed entertainingly gruesome murder stories.

In 1921, after years of pleading for some kind of proper schooling, Nancy was allowed a year's boarding at Hatherop Castle, an informal private establishment for young ladies of good family. Laura Thompson, in her biography of Nancy, describes Hatherop as not so much a school, "more a chaste foretaste of debutante life". Here, in somewhat Spartan conditions, she learned French and other subjects, played organised games and joined a Girl Guide troop. It was her first extended experience of life away from home, and she enjoyed it. The following year, under strict supervision, she was allowed to accompany four other girls on a cultural trip to Europe. She visited Paris, Florence and Venice; her letters home are full of expressions of wonder at the sights and treasures: "I had no idea I was so fond of pictures ... if only I had a room of my own I would make it a regular picture gallery".

Debutante and socialite

Nancy's eighteenth birthday in November 1922 was, in the custom of the day, the occasion for a grand "coming-out" ball, marking the first stage of her entry into Society. This was followed in June 1923 by her presentation at Court—a brief formal meeting with King George V at Buckingham Palace—after which she was officially "out" and could attend the balls and parties that constituted the London Season. She spent much of the next two years, still strictly chaperoned, in a round of social events, making new friends and recounting many of her experiences in letters to Tom, by now a schoolboy at Eton. In 1926 Asthall Manor was finally sold. While the new house at Swinbrook was made ready for the family, the female members lived for three months in Paris. Nancy spent her time taking art lessons, sightseeing and shopping. These three months, says Hastings, "marked the beginning of a lifelong love affair with France".

In 1927, the move to Swinbrook having been completed, Nancy began a course at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. This lasted only a month; the ordeal of looking after herself in a bedsit proved too much. She continued to enjoy social life in London, basing herself in the family's new London house in Rutland Gate, or staying with friends. Among these was, including Evelyn Gardner who, she informed Tom, was engaged "to a man called Evelyn Waugh who writes, I believe, very well". Although Nancy was now of age, her father still monitored her activities, and maintained an aggressive hostility towards most of her male friends—particularly since, as Hastings points out, these tended towards the frivolous, the aesthetic and the effeminate. Among them was Hamish St Clair Erskine, the second son of the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, an Oxford undergraduate four years Nancy's junior. He was, according to Hastings, the least suitable partner of all, "the most shimmering and narcissistic of all the beautiful butterflies"—and the one most likely to offend Lord Redesdale. The pair met in the summer of 1928 and became unofficially engaged, despite his homosexuality (of which Nancy may not have been aware. Against a backdrop of advice from her friends—Evelyn Waugh advised her to "dress better and catch a better man"— the affair endured, in an on-off fashion, for several years.

Romantic life

On 4 December 1933, after a going-nowhere romance with homosexual Scottish aristocrat Hamish St Clair-Erskine, she married the Hon. Peter Murray Rennell Rodd (nicknamed "Prod"; 16 April 1904 – 1968), the youngest son of Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell. Rodd was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford. During the Second World War he served with the Welsh Guards as a Lieutenant-Colonel. He is now remembered as the model (along with Basil Murray) for the disreputable but brilliant Basil Seal in Evelyn Waugh's novels Black Mischief and Put Out More Flags.

The marriage was a failure; her husband was unfaithful and couldn't keep a job; in time Nancy took over the family finances, working in the bookshop G. Heywood Hill, and was unfaithful in her turn. Though the Rodds separated in 1939, they continued to see one another on a purely friendly basis, and Rodd used her Paris flat as an occasional base. She also gave him financial assistance from time to time. They were divorced in 1958 (although Nancy is described as "the wife of Peter Rodd" on her headstone).

The turning-point in Nancy's hitherto very English existence was her meeting with French soldier and politician of Polish descent Colonel Gaston Palewski (Charles de Gaulle's Chief of Staff), whom she always called "Colonel" and with whom she had a relationship in London during the war. At the end of the Second World War she moved to Paris to be near him. The largely one-sided affair, which inspired the romance between Linda Talbot (née Radlett) and Fabrice de Sauveterre in Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love, lasted fitfully until Palewski's affair with and eventual 1969 marriage to Violette de Talleyrand-Périgord, the Duchesse de Sagan.

Life in Paris and Versailles

Based in Paris in an apartment at 7 rue Monsieur, VII, Mitford had a busy social and literary life and received countless guests visiting the city. She had a huge number of friends and acquaintances in the English, French and Italian aristocracies, as well as in the international set in Paris. She travelled frequently and established a pattern of visits to country houses in England, Ireland and France as well as annual visits to Venice. Although much of her life was spent in France, she remained English to the core in her beliefs and attitudes.

Nancy Mitford's public persona was notable: she was invariably elegantly dressed (often by Dior or Lanvin), she lived a hectic social life, and was a well-known public personality in the United Kingdom even though she lived in Paris. She had a particular "Mitford" brand of humour which became well known through her novels and newspaper articles and attracted a cult following. Her "teases" were famous, including a description in a Sunday Times article of Rome as a village centred on the vicarage, one post office and one train station.

Her novels, articles and biographies gave her a long-sought financial independence. Financial worries, and in particular the need to provide for her old age, had been (especially in earlier years) a constant concern. In 1967 she moved from Paris to 4 rue d'Artois in Versailles where she bought a house. There were a variety of reasons for her move. The owners of her Paris apartment needed it back for their children, she wanted a garden, and her Parisian friends were dying (Evelyn Waugh in 1966). Furthermore her relationship with Palewski was cooling. From her biography of Louis XIV she knew Versailles very well, making a good choice in the relocation.

Death

In her last four and a half years she endured increasing and finally unbearable pain due to cancer, which was slow to be diagnosed. She refused to complain, but the pain caused her to lose her faith in God. She died at Versailles, aged 68.

Writings

Letters, journalism and essays

Nancy Mitford's gift as a comic writer and her humour are evident throughout her novels and also in the many articles which she wrote for the London Sunday Times. In the 1950s and 1960s these articles made her appear to be England's expert on aspects of life across Europe. In 1986 her niece by marriage Charlotte Mosley edited some of these works in: A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929–1968. Her letters and essays are notable for their humour, irony and cultural and social breadth. Mitford was hired by Ealing Studios to work on the script of what became Kind Hearts and Coronets, but none of her writing survived in the final film.

Politically a moderate socialist, she somehow kept on good terms most of the time with her sisters, despite the extreme political views of Diana, Jessica and Unity, mainly by deploying her acerbic wit. Some of the sisters' letters are published in The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (2007).

U and non-U

She wrote an essay in Noblesse Oblige (1956), which helped to popularise the "U", or upper-class, and "non-U" classification of linguistic usage and behaviour — although this is something she saw as a tease and she certainly never took seriously. However, the media have frequently portrayed her as the snobbish inventor and main preserver of this usage. She is credited as editor of the book but in fact the project was organised by the publishers. One of her novels, The Pursuit of Love, had been used by Professor Alan Ross, the actual inventor of the phrase, as an example of upper-class linguistic usage.

Works

Novels

• Highland Fling (1931).
• Christmas Pudding (1932).
• Wigs on the Green (1935).
• Pigeon Pie (1940).
• The Pursuit of Love (1945).
• Love in a Cold Climate (1949).
• The Blessing (1951). Full text
• Don't Tell Alfred (1960).
  • The Best Novels of Nancy Mitford (1974).
  • The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford (2011).

Non-Fiction

• Madame de Pompadour (1954).
• Noblesse Oblige (1956).
• Voltaire in Love (1957).
• The preface to Saint-Simon at Versailles, by Lucy Norton (1958). Full text
• The Water Beetle (1962).
• The Sun King (1966).
• Frederick the Great (1970).
• A Talent to Annoy; Essays, Journalism and Reviews 1929–1968, edited by Charlotte Mosley (1986).

Collections of Letters

• Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley (1993).
• The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, edited by Charlotte Mosley (1996).
• The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952–73, edited by John Saumarez Smith (2004).
• The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley (2007).

Translator

• The Princess of Clèves, (1950).

Editor

• The Ladies of Alderley: Letters 1841–1850 (1938).
• The Stanleys of Alderley: Their letters 1851–1865 (1939).

(Mitford edited these two volumes of letters, written by the family of her great-grandparents, Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and his wife Henrietta Maria, daughter of the 13th Viscount Dillon).

Awards

She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and an Officer in the French Legion of Honour in 1972. It was Palewski who formally invested her, presenting her with the latter decoration, when she was already fatally ill. She died of Hodgkin's Disease on 30 June 1973 in Versailles. Palewski was with her on the day of her death. Her remains were brought home to England and are interred in the churchyard of St Mary's parish church at Swinbrook in Oxfordshire with those of her younger sisters, Unity Mitford (1914–1948) and Diana Mitford (1910–2003).

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Acton, Harold (1975). Nancy Mitford: A Memoir, Hamish Hamilton.
• Guinness, Jonathan; Catherine Guinness (1984). The House of Mitford, Hutchinson.
• Hastings, Selena (1985). Nancy Mitford: A Biography , Hamish Hamilton.
• Lovell, Mary S. (2010). The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family, Abacus.
• Thompson, Laura (2004). Life in a Cold Climate, Headline Book Publishing.

External links

• Works by Nancy Mitford, at Unz.org
• Portraits of Nancy Mitford
• An Open Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Peter Rodd (Nancy Mitford)
• The Official Nancy Mitford Website
• BBC Radio 4 Great Lives Programme on Nancy Mitford
• Literary Encyclopedia: Nancy Mitford
• A Biography of Nancy Mitford by Selina Hastings.
• Nancy Mitford Spied on Sisters